Working Papers

We review the optimal pattern of carbon emission abatements across countries in a simple multi-country world. We model explicitly the fact that the atmosphere is a public good. Within this framework we establish conditions for it to be necessary for optimality that the marginal cost of abatement be the same in all countries. These condition are quite restrictive, and amount to either ignoring distributional issues between countries or operating within a framework within which lump-sum transfers can be made between countries. These results have implications for the use of tradeable emission permits, which as normally advocated will lead to the equalization of marginal abatement costs across countries. The observation that the atmosphere is a public good implies that we may need to look at a...

We study a growth model with an environmental asset which is a source of utility and an input to consumption and production. The stock of this asset follows its own ecological dynamics, which are affected by economic activity. We study the implications of an approach to ranking sequences of consumption and environment over time that place weight both on the characteristics of the sequence over any finite period and on its very long run or limiting characteristics. Chichilnisky [5] has called these "sustainable preferences". The criterion shows more intertemporal symmetry than the discounted utilitarian approach. which clearly emphasizes the immediate future at the expense of the long run. In this respect Chichilniskys criterion captures some of the concerns of those who argue for sustainab...

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